Almanacs “This day in history - Boston Globe” plus 4 more

This day in history - Boston Globe
The Almanac - OfficialWire
Musician-folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes dies, sang with Woody Guthrie and ... - Everything Alabama Blog
Oklahomans make Guinness record book - Tulsa World
City plans to rely on attrition to balance budget - The Almanac Online

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Posted: 07 Dec 2009 01:52 AM PST

► In 1983, in Madrid, an Aviaco DC-9 collided on a foggy runway with an Iberia Air LinesBoeing 727 that was accelerating for takeoff, killing all 42 people aboard the DC-9 and 51 aboard the Iberia jet.

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The Almanac - OfficialWire

Posted: 04 Dec 2009 12:37 AM PST

The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus, Mars, Saturn and Mercury. The evening stars are Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include presidential portrait painter Gilbert Stuart in 1755; U.S. Weather Bureau meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who initiated daily weather bulletins, in 1838; English novelist Joseph Conrad in 1857; country singer Ferlin Husky in 1925 (age 84); singer Andy Williams in 1927 (age 82); rocker Ozzy Osbourne in 1948 (age 61); former race car driver Rick Mears in 1951 (age 58); actresses Daryl Hannah and Julianne Moore, both in 1960 (age 49); Olympic figure skater Katarina Witt in 1965 (age 44); and actors Brendan Fraser in 1968 (age 41) and Brian Bonsall in 1981 (age 28).

On this date in history:

In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio opened with an enrollment of 29 men and 15 women, the nation's first truly co-educational college.

In 1929, the Ford Motor Co. raised the pay of its employees from $5 to $7 a day despite the collapse of the U.S. stock market.

In 1948, the first news of the Whittaker Chambers spy case disclosed that microfilm of secret U.S. documents was found in a pumpkin on the former magazine editor's Maryland farm, allegedly for delivery to a communist power.

In 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful heart transplant at Cape Town, South Africa.

In 1984, poison gas leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. The world's most deadly chemical disaster was blamed for 2,889 deaths.

In 1990, soldiers seized Argentina's army headquarters two days before U.S. President George H.W. Bush was due to visit. The rebellion was quickly put down.

In 1992, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize a U.S.-led multinational force to Somalia.

Also in 1992, Roman Catholic officials in Boston agreed to pay compensation to 68 people who claimed they were sexually abused 25 years ago by priest James Porter.

In 1995, South Korean police arrested former President Chun Doo-hwan on charges of orchestrating the December 1979 military coup that helped him to power.

In 1997, delegates from 131 countries met in Canada to sign the Convention on the Prohibition, Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines. The United States, Russia and China weren't among the 212 nations that signed.

In 2001, responding to a new wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, Israel struck the West Bank with planes, helicopter gunships, tanks and bulldozers, firing missiles into Yasser Arafat's headquarters.

In 2003, an international court in Tanzania convicted three Rwandan media executives of genocide for inciting a 1984 killing spree by machete-wielding gangs accused of slaughtering about 800,000 Tutsis.

In 2004, the death toll from a series of storms in the Philippines stood at a reported 568 with hundreds missing.

Also in 2004, Ukraine's top court invalidated the Nov. 21 presidential election and said it was fraught with fraud. A new election was set for Dec. 26.

In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union charged the CIA with violating U.S. and international human rights laws by transporting terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation in secret prisons.

In 2006, Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. foreign policy, was re-elected president of Venezuela.

In 2007, an estimate by U.S. intelligence says Iran halted its nuclear bomb program in 2003 but adds Tehran "is keeping open the option to develop" such weapons.

Also in 2007, the British schoolteacher jailed by Sudan for allowing her 7-year-old students to name a class teddy bear "Mohammed," an act perceived by Muslims as an Islam insult, was pardoned and released after serving about half her 15-day sentence.

In in 2008, a large bomb was disarmed at a busy rail station in Mumbai, site of terrorist attacks that killed more than 170 people, Indian officials announced.

Also in 2008, Bangkok's two airports resumed operations after Thai anti-government protesters ended a weeklong occupation, officials said. A court order dissolved the current ruling government coalition for alleged election fraud.

A thought for the day: poet Stella Benson said, "Call no man foe but never love a stranger."

Musician-folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes dies, sang with Woody Guthrie and ... - Everything Alabama Blog

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 04:48 PM PST

By The Associated Press

November 30, 2009, 6:38PM

Bess Lomax Hawes (Courtesy of University of Illinois Press)

LOS ANGELES - Bess Lomax Hawes, who sang with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, co-wrote the Kingston Trio hit "M.T.A." and spent a lifetime documenting American folklore in recordings and films, has died at age 88, her family said Monday.

Hawes, who moved to Portland, Ore., from Los Angeles two years ago, died there Friday of natural causes, according to her daughter, Corey Denos of Bellingham, Wash.

Hawes, who was the daughter of legendary folk musicologist John Lomax, grew up helping her father collect and transcribe field recordings of folk musicians for the Library of Congress in the 1920s and '30s.

In the 1940s, she had joined Guthrie, Seeger, her husband, Butch Hawes, and others in a popular, if loose-knit, folk group called the Almanac Singers that Seeger has since joked never bothered to rehearse until it got onstage. Her brother, musicologist Alan Lomax, had made some of Guthrie's earliest recordings.

"As a group, they wrote a lot of songs, usually in support of union movements," Denos said of the Almanac Singers.

In the late 1940s, Hawes and Jacqueline Steiner co-wrote "M.T.A.," a whimsical, banjo-driven tale of a harried commuter named Charlie who gets on a Boston subway, learns he doesn't have the proper fare and is never allowed to get off. Often called "Charlie and the M.T.A.," it became a hit for the Kingston Trio a decade later.

Hawes, meanwhile, moved to Los Angeles with her husband in the 1950s, settling into what was then a bohemian community in Topanga Canyon.

She later joined the faculty at California State University, Northridge, which honored her with a Phenomenal Woman Award in 2004. In the 1960s and '70s, as a professor in the anthropology department, she made several documentary films exploring American music and folklore.

She also taught banjo, guitar and mandolin.

She moved to Washington in the mid-1970s, where she was director of the National Endowment of the Arts' folk arts program until retiring in 1992. Then-President Bill Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

Besides her daughter, Hawes is survived by two other children, daughter Naomi Bishop and son Nicholas Hawes, both of Portland, Ore., and six grandchildren.

Denos said a private family service is planned next week, with public services expected later.

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Oklahomans make Guinness record book - Tulsa World

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 06:17 AM PST

Carrie Underwood graces the cover of "The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2010," along with Chicago White Sox hurler Mark Buehrle and President Barack Obama.

Underwood's a glamorous country superstar from Checotah, Buehrle pitched a perfect game, and Obama moved into a white house.

But did any of them make an 839-gallon cup of lemonade big enough to set a new Guinness World Record and land one of them in this year's "Ripley's Believe It or Not! Seeing is Believing" book?

Nope, that honor goes to 40-year-old Arthur Greeno, who owns the Tulsa Chick-fil-A on 71st Street, where Greeno helped make that whopping cup of lemonade in August 2008.

"To make the drink," according to the Ripley's book, "11,730 lemons were hand-squeezed, yielding 145 gallons of lemon juice, which was added to more than 1,000 pounds of sugar, 250 pounds of ice and 580 gallons of water."

Looking back on the feat, Greeno recently said it was all about "the wow factor" and wasn't just about breaking a record.

"We sold all the lemonade," he said of the drink sold for a minimum of $10 a gallon, "and we gave (more than $10,000) to the Little Light House."

By the way, Greeno plans to set a new world record this summer when he makes a 1,500 gallon cup of sweet tea.

On page 139 of the Ripley's book, Greeno's humongous cup of lemonade joins the likes of chocolate-wrestling, gourmet raw rat meat and Fredric J. Baur, who invented the Pringles chip tube and asked his own ashes be buried in

one of those tall cans.

Greeno isn't the only Oklahoman featured in the Ripley's book. He's joined by Mike Wallis of Warner, who, according to the book, "built a steel fishing rod 83 feet long with a fully-functioning reel."

By the way, that's about the length of two school buses.

Matt Gleason 581-8473
matt.gleason@tulsaworld.com

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City plans to rely on attrition to balance budget - The Almanac Online

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 06:31 AM PST

A report issued by Menlo Park reveals plans to rely heavily on attrition to balance the city's budget in coming years.

The report comes as the city looks at reducing a projected $1.1 million deficit in the 2010-11 fiscal year. The deficit could very well be larger than that, the report notes, if tax revenue continues at its current slow pace.

The report identifies $425,000 in savings on employee costs, largely through restructuring around retirements. It also suggests that the city replace the academic summer school program with a recreational one.

The City Council will weigh in on the report at a goal-setting meeting Tuesday, Dec. 8. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the council chambers, located between Laurel and Alma streets in the Civic Center complex.

Almanacs

Monday, December 7, 2009